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Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Byzantine Art

Author(s): P. A. Michelis
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Sep., 1952), pp. 21-45
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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NEO-PLATONIC PHILOSOPHYAND BYZANTINE ART


P. A. MICHELIS

I. The Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art


Various recent works on early Christian and Byzantine art have approached
it through Neo-Platonic philosophy. The influence of Neo-Platonism in the
shaping of Christian philosophy is indisputable; so too, consequently, is the
influence of Neo-Platonic aesthetics-particularly of Plotinian aesthetics-in
the shaping of early Christian and Byzantine art. But in order to understand
why the factor of Neo-Platonic philosophy is now brought into play in connection
with Byzantine art and to determine what part it should play in the aesthetics
of Byzantine art, a historical survey of the latter from the moment it began to
be explored is necessary.
There is virtually no systematic aesthetics of the Byzantine period; all we
have are observations of Byzantine art-observations, moreover, which from
the point of view of aesthetics are not systematized, since the scholars laid stress
either on archaeology or on history without examining deeply the main aesthetic problems. Furthermore, the aesthetic approach to Byzantine art has
always been indirect, as has been its recognition as a full-fledged art. Now,
Western mediaeval art was approached directly and it was, in consequence,
this offshoot of Christian art (particularly the Gothic) which was taken as a
model in the aesthetics of the Christian art period. Conversely, mediaeval
Eastern art was long considered as a by-product of Rome's decline; an art
bereft of spirituality, ossified and uncouth. The aesthetics of Byzantine art was,
therefore, also tardy in acquiring a status, and followed all the phases which
the recognition of Eastern art underwent.
The small attention paid to mediaeval art as a whole is due to the Italian
Renaissance, which, as a result of its complete absorption in antique beauty,
condemned mediaeval art as "barbaric." Inevitably, our entire aesthetic education has since then rested on classical ideals, and in fact, on the Renaissance
conception of them, which often misinterpreted the ancient spirit. Since then, a
narrow humanistic education with a one-sided aesthetics has crippled our
aesthetic judgment, and to this day prevents it from being objective. The only
justification for this insistence on the classical ideal is that it presupposes a
more accessible-an anthropocentric-philosophy, and a corresponding aesthetics. This is in contrast to mediaeval art, which reflects a more abstruse
theocentric philosophy and aesthetics. Despite man's inherent propensity to
both, the former, more directly than the latter, lends itself to the understanding.
In any case, the appreciation of mediaeval art could not begin before man's
philosophical and aesthetic outlook accorded with the spirit of this art-namely,
until the anthropocentric had turned to a theocentric approach. This turn
occurred in the Romantic age. Then, in contrast to the neo-classicists' standards
of antique beauty (chiefly represented by WAinckelmann,with considerable
positivism) an aesthetics emerged which regarded beauty as the "reflection of
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the divine," as the human illustration of God's perfection,' according to Schelling.


The infinite depths of the soul, the sublimation of love, a certain renouncement
of the flesh, and the turn to nature, which Rousseau had heralded, led
Romantics to a new aesthetic perception. The aesthetics of pictorial beauty,
as Ruskin finally formulated it, in strictly denying geometric patterns, and in
referring even to moral values, paved the way to appreciation not only of
mediaeval but of every anti-classical art also.
Goethe showed this tendency as early as 1772, in his study on German architecture (meaning the Gothic); and in 1830 Victor Hugo showed it again in
Notre Dame, not to mention others who followed. With the reaction of the
Academicians to Romanticism, came the Neo-Renaissance and finally eclecticism.
In any case, the movement for the revival of mediaeval styles, like the NeoRomantic, the Neo-Gothic, the Neo-Byzantine, and even the Neo-Arabic (as
itself being anti-classic), was actually set afoot then. Yet, no aesthetics of the
Byzantine period even then found shape. The Neo-Byzantine forms created at
the time were, in essence, Neo-Romantic-for they were still treated in the
light of Western mediaeval art. Appreciation of Byzantine art was prompted
chiefly by archaeological research, but could not be either complete or accurate,
for it followed these methods of aesthetic approach:
(a) It rested on classical standards, and so sought ancient beauty in Byzantine
art, which, as it fell short of it, was underestimated. In this sense, the method
may be called "negative."
(b) It judged by morphological criteria and, ignoring the essence of Byzantine
art, examined its external peculiarities, such as the low-relief work in sculptural
decoration, the monochrome background of painting, etc. Naturally, all these
external traits remained aesthetically unrelated and, in fact, often clashed with
one another, so long as the one deeper binding link remained undiscovered.
In this sense the method was "external."
(c) It relied on historical-genetic affinity. It sought, that is to say, to explain
Byzantine art by the influence it had received from the Roman or Oriental
tradition and civilization. Hence, the famous problem posed by Strygowski,
"Rome or the Orient?"-a question which only an archaeologist's mentality
could apply to the appreciation of the art of a period.
Archaeology in those days, with its mainly historical interests, assumed that
Byzantine art might very well be the product of certain arts historically preceding it, and that these could therefore be taken as the only guides to its
appreciation. Thus, it overlooked the special character of this art which sprang,
not from the merging of two previous ones, but from an original inspiration in
composition that was able to assimilate influences and traditions. This method,
therefore, overlooked the subject it proposed to study. In this sense it may be
called "annihilating."
This reliance of archaeology on historical sources was due to the general turn
to history that marked the age. But history for a long time underestimated
Byzantine civilization and was thus responsible for the indirect and misguided
I As quoted by Rob. Zimmermann,Aesthetik (Wien, 1865), p. xix: "anschauende Begriff
des Menschen von der Vollkommenheit in Gott."

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attention paid to the art of the Eastern Church, which it sought to minimize
by characterizing it as a by-product of the Roman decline, or at best, a compound of foreign influences. Thus, the main factor of Byzantine art-its Greek
spirit-was ignored.
Hence my contention that no proper aesthetics of Byzantine art had come
into being, and that what appreciation Byzantine art had gained up to that
time had been only indirect. Of course the Greek element in it was recognized
(indeed prematurely so by some archaeologists such as Millet); but since this
inheritance was sought in the letter and not in the spirit, its detection, far
from shedding light on the art under study, rather tended to obscure it. So it
is that Morey, one of the later art historians, transposed Strygowski's question
from "Rome or the Orient?" to "Atticism or Alexandrianism?", as Demus
aptly remarks.2
It is evident then that what we need in the case of Byzantine art is an aesthetics uninfluenced by historical prejudices, and of which the raw material, so
to speak, shall be the Byzantine works themselves; an aesthetics that shall
judge those works directly, by aesthetic criteria. It will be well to ask at this
stage whether Western mediaeval art, if thus approached, might not through
the aesthetics it provided act as a guide to an appreciation of its Eastern counterpart; might not be treated as a starting-point for a comparative aesthetics. To
associate the two arts is justifiable enough, since-despite the fact that one
sprang up in the East and the other in the West-both are expressions of the
same ideal-the Christian religion. Christianity changed man's aesthetic outlook,
irrespective of race or country. Let us then see first what were the aesthetic
demands of Christianity, and afterwards how the Greek, the Roman, or the
Frenchman conceived and expressed them.
It was chiefly the German philosophers of idealism who formulated the
primary aims of Christian aesthetics. Schelling has said characteristically that if
classical art aimed at the inclusion of the infinite in the finite, Christian art
sought to achieve the reverse; that is, "to make the finite an allegory of the
infinite. "3
But these philosophers too, and the Romantics generally, owe their attitude
to Kant, according to whom the core of all philosophic and aesthetic outlook is
subjective. It was this Copernican revolution in philosophy, which impelled the
Romantics later to place ineffable, transcendental experiences in the infinite
depths of the soul, and which caused them to seek in art the reflection of divine
perfection. However, Kant is also a pioneer in the field of aesthetics; for here,
influenced by the Englishman Burke,4 he places beside the Beautiful another
value-that of the Sublime-which alone can explain the profound aesthetic
emotion aroused by the sense of the infinite, the immeasurable, the transcendental; for, according to Kant, the Sublime does not exist in nature.
Hegel was thus able to establish later that Christian art comes under the
2 Otto

Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration (London, 1947), p. 44.


Quoted by Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (Mtinchen, 1868), p. 394.
4In England the continuity of Gothic art had not been interrupted throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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aesthetic category of the Sublime,' through which, chiefly if not exclusively, is


expressed the infinite in which is immanent the Omnipresent God, the One and
Only God, Who said, " 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Unfortunately,
Hegel misinterpreted Byzantine art-partly perhaps because he had no direct
knowledge of it; chiefly, however, because to his German mind the idea of the
Sublime (as he found it expressed in the Gothic cathedral) did not even enter
into Byzantine art, which he regarded as merely a declining one. In any case,
these were the lines which the art historians and critics automatically followed
in their aesthetics of Western Christian art. On the basis that the depths of the
human soul were infinite, and in the conviction that art was capable of expressing
the divine, art critics like Worringer, Dehio, and Schmarsow were profoundly
impressed by the steep heights of Gothic architecture; they justified its tendency
to suggest infinity in the disposition of its spaces, its verticality without measure,
and the expressionism of its painting and sculpture which sought to reproduce
the transcendental experience. Simultaneously, others (like Viollet-le-Duc)
studied the system of proportions of the Gothic cathedral, the principles and
techniques employed in it, the methods of working the material, and its other
technical and artistic features. They thus succeeded in gaining from direct
study and experience an inner appreciation of Western mediaeval art. But the
findings of this study could not, without strain, be applied to Byzantine art.
For although both arts arouse in the spectator a sense of the sublime, they yet
stand apart in their conception of sublimity, and therefore in the means they
employ to express it. Expressionism, the suggestion of infinite space, upward
flights, and other features of Gothic art do not play the same role in the
Byzantine, or appear there in another form and in other combinations, for the
simple reason that the Greek spirit differs from the Northern, and Greek art is
always distinguished by measure, harmonious calm, and spirituality.
An inner appreciation of Byzantine art therefore spells, as does a similar
appreciation of Western art, an aesthetics of the Sublime, since both refer to
the Christian ideal; but in the case of Byzantine art, it is the Sublime as Greek
sensibility grasped and expressed it. And the Greek spirit has certain inherent
and traditional tendencies which appear as permanent principles in every one
of its manifestations.
The reason why the aesthetics of mediaeval Western art followed the lines
laid down by Hegel only subconsciously, and was not formed into an aesthetics
of the Sublime, was that only art historians then dealt with this art period. On
the one hand, they produced an applied aesthetics that paid little heed to
philosophical justification. On the other hand, they were interested in the
phenomenon of the mutations of art in time; were anxious to bring this evolution
under laws and principles. They therefore elaborated a philosophy of art
history which sought "the basic concepts" underlying the latter. In this search,
they formulated theories of which the starting point was now the form (as in
the case of Wdlfflin), now the content (as in the case of Schmarsow), now the
race (as in the case of Worringer).6
5 Hegel, Vorlesungenitber die Aesthetik (2e Aufl., Frommanns, Stilttgart), I, p. 494.
6 In this connection see W. Passarge, Die Philosophie der Kunstgeschichte (Junker und
Dunhaupt, 1930).

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Philosophers proper were usually indifferent to the incidental manifestations


of the arts and the mutations of artistic expression in historical periods unless,
like Hegel, they saw in history the teleological evolution of the spirit. If they
specialized in aesthetics, they were interested in little more than the sort of
normative aesthetics which fairly covers every manifestation of art irrespective
of time and place. They would indeed have found it difficult to accept either an
anthropocentric or a theocentric aesthetics; instead they elaborated an aesthetics
now of form, now of content. Broadly speaking, they split into two schoolsthat of realistic, objective; and that of idealistic, subjective aesthetics. Ultimately, there appeared adherents of critical philosophy who wished to merge
both schools.
There is no doubt that, as Lipps maintains, aesthetic principles have no
history; but there is as little doubt that every great art period shows a certain
characteristic style, inspired by the peculiar trends of the age, which alone can
explain the structure of its art. If, then, normative aesthetics is to retain its
stability and at the same time its link with the philosophy of art history, we
must, I suggest, in a survey of the history of art, reduce "basic concepts" to
aesthetic categories and view each great art period as the expression of one of
these. I would suggest that in a philosophy of art history, we raise aesthetic
categories from concepts of species, which they are in normative aesthetics, to
concepts of genera. Thus the category of the Beautiful engenders all classical
art; the category of the Sublime all Christian art. The category of the Beautiful
and of the Sublime are to be found recurring alternately throughout the history
of European art, because man possesses an innate sense of Beauty and Sublimity,
ever in opposition to each other. Not unnaturally in an anthropocentric attitude
toward life, it is the category of the Beautiful which prevails; whereas a theocentric view of life brings the category of the Sublime into its own. The third
category-that of the Graceful, which partakes of both-is often to be found
mediating between them, and dominates art periods like the Rococo. The
Tragic, the Comic, and the Ugly are secondary categories deriving their primary
elements from the two fundamental categories of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
Karl Groos,7 in asserting the Beautiful itself to be but one of other eauivalent
categories, has made such classification possible.
The alternate recurrence of the aesthetic categories well explains why an art
era will generally feel a greater affinity to one which is two removes from it,
than to the one immediately preceding it. So we find the Romantics reviving
mediaeval Christian art, which the Renaissance had condemned.
This view of aesthetic categories as genera does not necessarily exclude their
inter-crossing in any art period. For, however much one or other of them may
predominate periodically, they. are in fact all related to one another, since all
have a common spring in aesthetic joy. In studying the predominant aesthetic
category in an art period, we should examine it also in the light of the inherent
tendencies and traditions of the people which constitute the main factor, the
7Karl Groos, Einleitung in die Aesthetik (Giessen, 1892), pp. 46-51. See also: V. Basch,
Essai critique sur l'Esthetique de Kant (Paris, 1927), pp. 556-557. On the objective significance of the aesthetic categories, see: R. Bayer, L'esthetique de la grdce (Paris, 1933), tom.
II, p. 433; and V. Feldman, L'esthetique franfaise contemporaine (Paris, 1936), pp. 107-110.

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nucleus of this art period. As the Christian dogma was filtered through Greek
philosophy, so the idea of the Sublime was filtered through Greek sensitiveness
when it marked Byzantine art-an art of which Greeks were the main creators.
Through an aesthetic approach to the philosophy of art history, I have elsewhere
attempted to analyze Byzantine art.8
If further proof were needed of the purely sublime inspiration of early Christian
and Byzantine art, we have it in the turn already evident in the latest period of
antiquity, from the philosophy of the Beautiful to that of the Sublime. Of course,
aesthetics did not at that age constitute a separate and specialized science.
But we find as early as Plato's day a nascent consciousness of the soul's upward
striving. Love is the demon that moves the soul to reach out for the divine, and
in the "Phaedrus" Plato describes the soul's divine ascent as a direct illustration
of the ineffable and the transcendental.
The Neo-Platonists later speak clearly of the soul's fall from, and return to,
the One. "Our country whence we came and whither the father resides,"9 says
Plotinus in the manner of an apostle of Christ. In his tractates on the Beautiful
and Intelligible Beauty, he speaks of the Good as lying in "the beyond," and as
being "the source and the origin of the Beautiful" ;10 of the soul's intuition as
"preceding seeking and reasoning" ;1" of vision as inner, mystic, "inwardgazing" ;12 and he affirms that, "never would the eye behold the sun if it did not
become sun-like, nor would the soul behold beauty, if it did not become beautiful.
Let everyone who would behold God and Beauty first become God-like and
beautiful."'3 Rightly, then, Zimmermann characterizes him as an "ancient
romantic" who sought beauty in the divine and the transcendental, of which
worldly beauty is but a reflection.
The idea of the Sublime is more clearly discernible in Poseidonius and Philo
the Alexandrian.14 Longinus, probably at about the same time as Plotinus,
writing "On the Sublime," defines it as "an echo of the lofty mind." As an example of the sublime style, he quotes the words of Genesis, as Hegel did so
much later: "And God said, 'let there be light' and there was light."
The influence of Neo-Platonism on Christian philosophy, which need not
here be stressed, and the transcendental Christian dogma could have inspired
no other aesthetic category than the Sublime, in the religious-minded early
Christian age and the age of Byzantium. That the manifestations of this aesthetic category underwent mutations, went through phases of grandeur and
decline, is only natural. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the later students
of Byzantine art, who realized the need of examining it "from within," should
have had recourse to the Neo-Platonic precepts and their application in Byzantine philosophy and religion, on which to build up their aesthetics of Byzantine
art.
8 Michelis, P. A., An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art (Athens 1946).
9 Plotinus, Ennead I, 6, 8, 21.
I, 6, 8, 41.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., V, 8, 6, 2.
12

Ibid., , 8, 9, 1.

13Ibid., I, 6, 9, 30.
14Kuhn, Jos H., "T4&os,Eine Untersuchung zur Entwicklungsgeschichte
gedankens von Platon bis Poseidonios (Stuttgart, 1941) pp. 72-111.

des aufschwung-

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However, the conversion of philosophic and theological teachings, or of


religious creeds into aesthetic principles, is no easy task. Two recent studies
on Byzantine art and aesthetics, which rely for their conclusions on the NeoPlatonic factor, afford us an opportunity to examine how this factor could best
be used to obtain a deep insight into Byzantine aesthetics. The studies of which
I shall speak here are, in the order of their publication, Grabar's Plotinus and the
Origins of Mediaeval Aesthetics, and Demus' Byzantine Mosaic Decoration."5
II. The Philosophy of Plotinus and Mediaeval Art
(1) Plotinus, says Grabar, heralds the spectator of the Middle Ages and his
philosophy finds expression in mediaeval art.'6 This sentence seems to me incomplete without this supplement: he was also the last of the Greeks. That in
fact, is why his philosophy finds expression chiefly in the art of the transitional
period of latest antiquity, preceding the early Christian.
Let me try to prove my statement theoretically first. Plotinus lived in the
third century A.D. He came to Rome from Egypt and taught a philosophy
which lent support to those mystic-probing tendencies instilled into the declining Roman State through the Eastern religions. But in his mystic quest, he
addressed the pagan world with philosophic, not dogmatic or religious, arguments; indeed, he was himself a pagan, although aware of the existence of
Christ. That Christian theology later exploited his philosophy is immaterial to
our present purpose.
The philosophy of Plotinus, in any case, brought a radical turn to Greek
thought. Metaphysics took the place of dialectics.17In Plato dialectic is confined
within certain clearly-defined bounds, and when these must be surpassed to
express the super-rational, illustrative myths are introduced for elucidation.
The philosophy of Plotinus, on the contrary, deals with all aesthetic and mythological problems in relation to a metaphysical source of Being-the One.
In Plato we have a certain dualism: on the one hand, the Ideas-eternal and
immutable-and, on the other, the sensible world which is a representation of
the ideal. The two worlds are of course related, with the second subordinate to
the first, but how the one issued from the other-the image from the archetype-remains in Plato a secondary consideration.'
In Plotinus, however, the source is the One; beyond all predication, amorphous,
unconfined, It does not think, does not will, does not act, has no consciousness,
nor can we imagine It. But in its immanence, It engenders its many derivatives
by illumination as warmth emanates from the sun leaving it unchanged. That
is the theory of emanation.
The One first engenders Nous, which has duality as being both intelligence
15 Andre Grabar, Plotin et les origines de l'esthetique medievale, Cahiers archeologiques,
Fasc. No. 1, (Paris: Vanocst, 1945); Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration.
16

Grabar, p. 16.

Johannes Theodoracopoulos, Plotins Metaphysic des Seins (Buhl Baden, 1928), p. viii.
18 Rob. Zimmermann, in his Geschichte der Aesthetik (Wien, 1858), p. 127, writes that only
the image made by the statue-maker can give an idea of the work of the creator. He too
must have copied the archetype, for there is no question of a creator who first fashioned both
archetype and its copy. Aristotle clearly asserts that form and matter are both equally
eternal and uncreated.
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and the intelligible; afterwards it engenders the Ideas which are both archetypes
and forces; then Nature; and finally, Matter where there is division and
plurality. All is linked by harmony and sympathy. We have, then, clearly
outlined a descent from the spiritual to the material, yet along with it a continuous tendency of the material to return to the spiritual. Matter indeed
becomes the vessel of this return, for no spirit is wholly immaterial, just as
from matter some vestige of spiritual perfection is never absent. Spirit and matter
permeate each other. Thus Plato's dualism is bridged, and the Platonic world of
Ideas begins to flow. The Idea in its descent begins to participate in multiplicity; that is why in Nature perceptible beauty is an exception. Art, however,
purifies the Idea, of which the perfection lies in completeness and in unity. The
appearance of the Idea in Matter constitutes the beauty of the work of art-a
concept which reminds one of Hegel. The downward flow of the Idea is then
checked on its appearance in perceptible beauty; and art, in so far as it achieves
this, rescues man from the fall and becomes a religion in that it alone can render
the spiritual visible to man's bodily eyes. Man, however, has also inner vision
which can reveal to him the spirit in a perfection no longer visible, but in which
his intellect may apprehend clarity, goodness, truth, and beauty. If then, perception is the lowest rung in the ladder of gnosis, with intellectual activity above
it, and apperception above that again, we have in ecstasy the topmost rungfor ecstasy comes of intoxicating participation in the One.
Plotinus has therefore rightly been called an "ancient romantic." He too, like
the later romantics, considered beauty to be an image of the divine, since he
affirms it to spring from the higher source-the One. The soul of the seer is
lured by the beauty of the object of vision, because the soul unknowingly sees
itself in it; as the child is fascinated by its own reflection, which it does not
recognize, in the mirror. But, as Theodoracopoulos rightly observes,'9 Plotinus,
in contrast to the romantics of the West, considers that the infinite, too, should
be accepted as a form, even though without relation to the finite. He maintains
that the soul cannot grasp the idea of formlessness and is "possessed by form
from beginning to end." Theodoracopoulos thus recalls Philebus, who affirmed
that the Universe is constituted by forms, and he adds: "The reasonable nature
and the beauty of the world is not a projection of subjective cognition, in the
sense of subjective idealism, but an a priori structure of the universe, prior to
all seeking and all reasoning."20He continues: "Where beginning and end call
for one another, there we have the whole simultaneously presented; this, in
fact, is not the principle of mystic search but the law of Greek art."'"
If Plotinus, then, is the herald of the Middle Ages, he is also the last of the
Greeks. This strange admixture in him of mystical search and of a dominating
sense of beauty gives us the peculiarly Plotinean aesthetics. Of course, his is an
aesthetics founded on the mystic elevation of the soul, but on confronting the
spiritual it is beauty which charms him; and it is through beauty that he attains
the spiritual realm. He pursues mystical ends by intellectual means; and because
19

Theodoracopoulos,

Ibid., p. 118.
21 Ibid., p. 121.

20

p. 112-121.

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he is led there mainly by his aesthetic faculties, the artistic element in him can
hardly be separated from the mystical.
No philosophy has given such prominence, as has that of Plotinus, to the
aesthetic factor. And however much his aesthetics may unconsciously aspire to
the sublime, it is still impregnated with the sense of beauty. The art he seeks
yearns for the sublime, but is not yet sublime. And a romantic art, like that of
the age of Plotinus, could not be so (unlike early Christian, and particularly
Byzantine art which has a transcendental character). Before art could turn
to the sublime completely, it had to adopt another attitude-indifference to, if
not renunciation of, Beauty-an attitude which Christianity, influenced by
Eastern models, brought to art and which it introduced also in its philosophy
from the moment it ceased to hide under the pagan garb.
Of course, the philosophy of Plotinus was later used as a pedestal for the
Christian dogma. But there are fundamental differences between them, of which
the main ones are:
(a) Plotinus' One is impersonal; the Christian's God is a Person.
(b) The One generates by illumination; God creates because He wills it and
out of infinite love for his creatures. Nature to the Christians is irrational.
(c) The highest rung of cognition, to Plotinus, is ecstasy. The experience,
however, is a personal conquest and must again and again be renewed in order
to participate in the One. For the Christian there is revelation which, if by a
divine act of grace it be vouchsafed to him once, is enough for his permanent
enlightenment as long as he himself also endeavors.
(d) In Plotinus, art, which makes the Idea perceptible, is a means of preventing
man's fall. Conversely, in Christianity, art is not a means of salvation, although
it helps man to elevate himself by representing symbolically the Passion and the
Saints, who intercede on our behalf when we worship them in their icons.
(e) The idol of the pagan has value in itself; the icon of the Christian has
not, except through the spectator. In Christian art, the active participation of
the individual in the aesthetic act is attained as was sought by Plotinus. But
the artistic act is not sufficient in itself.
(f) In Plotinus every manifestation of the spiritual in art is redolent of
beauty. In Christian art, however, the need of presenting transcendental symbols
and beatific conditions makes it sublime and intensely expressivistic, to the
point of being indifferent to beauty (although in Byzantine art, even in its
extremest manifestations, the Greeks preserved the element of beauty). But
let us now come to examples.
(2) The mediaeval anti-classic forms, more than any others (says Grabar)
correspond to the theory of Plotinus.22 His ideas exercized no influence on his
immediate environment, but found response in the early Christian age.23Grabar
brings forward as evidence the classicist revival led by the Neo-Platonists; an
artificial imitation of the past, which prevailed in Rome of the fourth century,
as the low-relief diptych of the "Symmachs and Nicomachs" shows.
Surely, however, this turn to the past is no proof that Plotinus' views were
22

Grabar, p. 16.

23

Ibid., p. 30.

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ignored by his age; but, on the contrary, the natural outcome of his viewsthe outcome of a mystical quest which yet, dominated by the idea of the beauty
of form, thus strives between two irreconcilable trends. I think with Rodenwaldt24
that the art-forms of his own age are those most in keeping with Plotinus'
ideas, because in them we find a strange combination of mysticism and Greek
morphology-an art romantic in spirit, but eloquent of beauty in form, as in
the diptych above mentioned. It is as characteristic of Neo-Platonism to be
mystic-searching yet pagan in its faith, as it is of its art to be romantic in spirit
but classicist in form. That is precisely why it did not exclude a recession to
form-dominated classicism, as it did not exclude the turn of Christian art to
the transcendental, when its inward-dwelling tendency gained supremacy.
This turn inward is foreshadowed in examples of Christian art in which the
spiritual expression is undoubtedly intense, but in which-while the external
symbol is still pagan (as, for instance, in the Orpheus of the Athens Byzantine
Museum)-the expression is necessarily subordinated to beauty of form. However, any work in which the influence of the East is immediately obvious, and in
which the symbols are purely Christian (as in the well-known sarcophagus of
Ravenna with the Magi), at once comes near expressivism of the kind we find
later in Byzantine art. The movements become intense, the bodies almost
levitate, the background is anti-naturalistic and infinite in its monotony, while
the whole takes on a transcendental character.
I would say the same of the Tetrarchs of San Marco, in which Grabar sees
archaism and a retreat of the concept of space, perhaps because he brings to the
work a naturalistic conception of the attitude of the bodies and the presentation
of space. In the sculpture of classical art, of course, the attitude of the statues
refers to bodies which are in harmony with the mind. In the Tetrarchs, however, merely the "fertile" moment that refers to a spiritual condition, which
the bodies by their unnatural position help to express, is presented. (Let us
observe, incidentally, that these bodies show movement and that movement in
itself indirectly suggests space.) Finally, Grabar's observation on the sarcophagus
of the philosopher (probably Plotinus) in the Lateran Museum, that the philosopher's feet are presented in perspective because of the fact that the low
relief unfolds along what is almost a single plane, proves nothing so well as the
important fact that sculpture is beginning to give way to painting, which, with
its two-dimensional surfaces, is in its nature the more suitable medium for
expressing spiritual conditions and transcendental visions and for depicting
dematerialized bodies. Grabar's efforts to derive from Plotinus the inception of
a new perspective suitable to express the transcendental; his efforts to explain
through this the composition of early Christian paintings are exceedingly farfetched. For in Plotinus there is no inkling of any such idea.
(3) It is not Plotinus' attitude toward the art of his age which concerns us,
says Grabar, but his manner of looking at a work of art and the philosophical
and religious value he attributes to vision.25 To Plotinus, the work of art (Grabar
24
G. Rodenwaldt, "Zur Kunstgeschichte der Jahre 220-270," Jahrbuch d. Deutsch. Arch.
Inst., LI, 1936, p. 82; and The Cambridge Ancient History, XII (1939), Ch. XVI, p. 544 and
563.
25 Grabar, p. 16.

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says) is not only the mirror which reflects the original as an image, but also a
work which receives the influence of the universal soul. It partakes of it, namely,
according to the law of universal sympathy.28 Consequently, Grabar concludes,
naturalistic imitation is, according to Plotinus, artistically inferior; and before
the artist can learn how to treat representations of another kind, he must
learn about the nature of vision.27
In a tractate of the Second Ennead entitled "How Remote Objects Appear
Small," Plotinus asks why distant-lying objects dwindle and those near appear
in their true size. And he explains that this happens, because size dwindles to
the degree to which colors fade. Then, no longer able to distinguish their parts,
we can no longer estimate the size of the whole by comparison with them; so
too, with a hill looked at from a distance. From this Grabar concludes that
Plotinus, in seeking to discover the true size of things, wants them on the first
plane, on a single plane, and consequently debars geometrical perspective and
aerial perspective, and puts in the place of the tints of distant objects local
colors.28Plotinus, however, mentions neither perspective, nor single plane, nor
space, nor local colors. Grabar's conclusions reflect only his own determination
to explain a posteriori through Plotinus an art with whose technique he is himself
familiar. But we could by this same method explain through Plotinus other
arts too, with similar anti-naturalistic techniques-explain perhaps even contemporary art, which discards perspective, several planes, and chiaroscuro, and
yet is not neo-Platonic. Moreover, assuming we can thus explain mediaeval
painting, how are we on the same principles-without space, given one plane
and the help of local colors only-to explain mediaeval architecture?
Grabar supports his argument on the grounds that Plotinus, in all he says
about vision, seeks the true size of objects. But Plotinus does not make their
size depend only on distance. This is evident from his assertion that, even
when an object is near, a fugitive glance which does not catch the details will
not allow us to assess the total by the parts. Plotinus thus wants us to guard
against the deceptive impressions of sight, in a philosophy which lays much store
by subjective elevation, and is bent, in consequence, on protecting the mind
from illusions of sight and from superficial impressions of participation in the
object.
Not only in the case of architecture but also in that of painting, the singleplane principle is utopian, as is the refutation of space and mass. No matter
whether a painting's representations are two-dimensional; no matter the degree
to which in anti-naturalistic painting the accentuation of depth with perspective
devices is avoided; space is always indirectly suggested by the gestures of the
figures and the difference in colors and in scale, which has the effect of making
some of the figures appear nearer and some more remote. The impression is
created of several planes and of life in the picture. The depth here, if it is not
presented as natural, is suggested as ideal.
The difference in the size of the figures in a composition of early Christian
26

Ibid., p. 17.
p. 18.

27 Ibid.,

28Grabar, p. 19.

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art is not due to a sense of perspective, but rather to a sense of proportion,


which impels the painter to make the more important figures larger. He does
not look outwardly, but uses his inward vision. He appraises and ranks. So it is
that on the pedestal of the obelisk of Theodosius,29the Emperor and his courtiers
are on a larger scale than that of the populace below. Furthermore, by superposition an illusion of depth is created. One gets the impression, in fact, that the
spectators at the hippodrome are drawing near one, because the superposition
is accompanied by more prominent sculpting, the higher the heads-or in
reality, the further back they are. They thus seem to be leaning forward. This
device of magnifying the remoter objects is assumed by Grabar to be a "reversed"
perspective-as though, that is to say, the spectator is intended to look at the
work from the Emperor's gallery.30And he thinks that space and the mass and
weight of the objects are ignored.
But let us see from where Grabar derives the theory of "reversed" perspective.
(4) Plotinus (he says) denies that the impression of vision is created in the
soul and stamped there, and maintains that it is created where the object of
vision stands; the soul, therefore, sees without being impressed by the object
of vision like the wax by the seal.3' From this Grabar concludes that the artist,
necessarily heeding the precepts of philosophy, inevitably produced a "reversed"
and ray-like perspective, since he saw the picture as though from where its
reproduced object stood, and not from his own point of vision.32
"Reversed" perspective, I venture to suggest, is a figment of the art critics'
imagination. From the time the Renaissance worked out a system of perspective
which, because it obeyed scientific laws, won general currency, art critics have
considered it an obligation to provide the anti-classical arts with its counterpart
-a "reversed" perspective. Their assumption is illogical, because: (a) The fact
that Renaissance painting employs perspective (whose correctness, incidentally, is questioned today)33 does not necessarily entail a "reversed" perspective for the earlier Christian art. (b) Perspective as a system is not an end
but a means in art, to be employed or not at will, since art can exist without it.
(c) The paintings of the Middle Ages testify to the fact that they at no time follow
a definite system of perspective, whether orthodox or reversed. Grabar indeed
admits as much, but considers it "an undecided" attitude.
Are there, one wonders, paintings with a "decidedly" reversed perspective?
Grabar mentions one that might at least seem so, and we would do well to
examine it, because it might easily mislead us. It is a fifth century ivory relief,
showing Chiist with his disciples seated around a table.4 On the face of it, the
composition might suggest "reversed" perspective, because Christ who is in the
background is larger than the disciples who dwindle in size as they are nearer
29
30

31
32

In the Hippodrome of Constantinople,


Grabar, pp. 32-33.

about 400 A.D.

Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 21.

33 The law of stability of sizes (Grossenkonstanz) irrespective of distance is of primary


importance to vision, "despite our idea that projective vision is an elementary and easy
matter," says E. Brunswik in his Experimentelle Psychologie, (J. Springer, 1935), p. 91.
34 A work of the fifth century
now in the Museum of Dijon.

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the foreground. In fact, however, the four apostles in the foreground are all on
one plane, as the feet of their seats testify. The table is also on this same plane.
The rest of the disciples are drawn about a semi-circular bow, perpendicular to
the line of the floor; there is, consequently, no perspective system here. Grabar
notes these imperfections,35but imputes them to the copyist's lack of skill, his
inability to show space and perspective flight. "The whole composition," he
says, "has been projected on a single plane, as the curtain which falls behind
the head of the Apostle proves."
To my mind, the impression derived is not of a single, but of numerous planes
-at least one for each pair of Apostles opposite one another. And in art, it is
the impression that counts and not the scientific accuracy of the composition.
In this work, for instance, the four Apostles in the first row, do not seem to
the spectator to be on the same plane, because they are caught up in the whole
composition, which suggests a circle to our imagination. If, however, Christ,
who is in the background, had been drawn smaller than all the disciples, according
to orthodox perspective, He would not have been the most prominent figure in
the composition. He has been made larger in proportion to His eminence and
all the rest are therefore subordinated to His person. The natural sizes of the
back- and fore-ground figures cease to seem reversed and appear true to the
artistic imagination; and, as in logic two negatives make an affirmative, to deny
here the reduction of Christ's proportions is to postulate His eminence. On the
same principle, the Almighty in the Byzantine churches is larger than any of
the other icons, although He is placed higher. Conversely, Da Vinci, in The
Last Supper, in order not to lessen the eminence of Christ in perspective, made
the length of the table face the spectator and was thus forced to present all
the apostles on one side of it. Other artists, who painted the Last Supper with
perspective accuracy, in placing Christ, the most eminent figure, in the background where He appears the smallest of all, have often been forced, in order to
enhance it, to exceed His scale or to place over His head clouds and angels and
employ other often ridiculous-devices.
Reversed perspective can not well be explained as due to the fact that the
painter transfers himself to the object he draws, acting on Plotinus' principle
that he should participate in it. Were he to do so, his bodily eyes would see
nothing; as for what he would see with his inner eye, that is not to be reproduced
by "reversed" perspective merely. Moreover, Plotinus tells us that before we
can become conscious of the ideal intellectual vision, which at the moment of
impact practically deprives us of our faculty of seeing, we must successively
detach ourselves from the object of vision, and again submerge ourselves in it.
Besides, Plotinus himself insists in his tractate on Vision, that two things should
be distinguished-the seer and the seen.
As an example of ray-like perspective, Grabar brings forward a miniature in
which the choirs are drawn ray-wise, although incidentally; the composition
shows also examples of other conflicting kinds of perspective.36
Grabar, p. 33.
A miniature of Cosmas the Indicoplectus in the Vatican. A copy of the ninth century
from the original of the sixth century in Alexandria.
35

36

34

P. A. MICHELIS

I consider that the so-called ray-like perspective is no perspective. In the first


place, man never sees all around, as though pivoting on a center. But even
assuming the artist to give us a bird's-eye view of persons sitting in a circle,
there will still be in the picture an upper and a lower part; and this is not the
case in the work under discussion. If finally we concede that the point of vision
coincides perpendicularly with the center of the circle, then we would have an
almost geometric projection of the bodies. Their heads would appear to rest
directly on their shoulders, they would be practically trunkless and only their
feet would emerge, unless they were lying flat in a circle. And indeed, here the
seated figures frontally presented are lying supine in a circle forming a rosette.
There is therefore no question of perspective here, but of an ingenious, persuasive
composition which, being schematic, has a decorative character. Before we enjoy
the picture and its content, its geometric pattern first impresses us.
Visual order in mediaeval art, then, depends on a gradation of values which
is not concerned with the perspectival arrangement of objects in outer space,
but with interpreting them to the inner understanding. It is content with a
plausible presentation, as long as it conveys its vision to the imagination. That
is why the painter does not record what he observes standing immobile, from
one point of vision, but as though he had been moving about observing from
several angles. He grasps a scene, then looks around, then up, then down, and
so he interprets rather than records. (Contemporary painting again has spurned
academic perspective, because the attitude of art toward the physical world
has changed. It is no longer interested in the naturalistic imitation of the phenomenon, but in displaying its inner significance and potentialities.)
(5) The illumined eye, according to Plotinus, glancing at the outer light and
the colors, which are themselves modes of light, distinguishes the existence of
the dark and material depth, hidden below the colored surface. From this
Grabar concludes that the picture aspiring to the presentation of the Nous,
must abolish depth and shadows and confine itself to chromatic surface only.Y7
But even could this be accomplished, how would it ensure the representation
of the Nous, the Reason which Plotinus seeks? "And the depth of everything is
matter, which is, consequently, all darkness. In that light is Reason and the
Mind sees Reason."38But how is light to be presented? The fire to Plotinus is
beautiful because it belongs to the "order of Kind,"39being a very fine matter.
But is a red color alone enough to convince us that it is a fire? And again, did we
grant that in mediaeval painting we are confined only to a chromatic surface
with local color effects, the variety of colors alone with their different degrees of
intensity would in themselves suggest plastic depth. Nor can masses be dematerialized by the mere subtraction of matter and abolition of shadow. A
spiritual quality must also be brought into play. Medieval painting did not do
away with shadows; but it did not render them naturalistically and as coming
from a single source of light. Thus it led our vision from external appearance to
inner import.
37 Grabar, p. 19.
38
3'

Plotinus, Ennead II 4, 5, 4, (Tract. on: llept rTov5bo vicai).


To6l KaX6o).
Plotinus I, 6, 3, 20 (Tractate on: MAep

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(6) The physics of Plotinus is, as Br6hier has rightly characterized it,
"spiritual" (spiritualiste) and not "mechanical" (m6caniste). In his physics then,
the parts are not the elements of the whole, but its products. Therefore the idea
of the whole is more real than the idea of its parts.40Hence Plotinus affirms that
the world becomes lucid to the spirit. The eye, flashing its inner light, meets
the outer; the one becomes transparent to, and interpenetrates with, the other.
That is why Grabar, commenting on the Doura fresco,4' finds that faces and
objects in it merge into one another, touch the ground without standing on it
lose their weight and mass, so that an insubstantial, transparent world is thus
created.42

The merging of bodies into one another implies disintegration of form; but
Plotinus categorically asserts form throughout. Besides, however much the
bodies may be dematerialized, they live in space and have plastic depth-both
impressions suggested indirectly by the difference in tones and scale and the
movement of the forms. The spirituality of the world here presented, then, is
achieved by such spiritual means as expression and symbolism, and not by the
subtraction of matter. As Plotinus himself says in his tractate on Intellectual
Beauty, "All is transparent, nothing dark. Every being is clear to, and within,
every other; for light comes to light and, there, the sun is both all stars and each
star; and each and all the stars are the sun. There too, each ever comes of all,
and is at the same time each and all." Such sublime concepts however, are not
to be brought down to the sphere of the material, nor is the view warranted
that they can be reproduced with the aid of external means only.
As Plotinus put the whole above the particular, so in anti-classical art the
parts lost the self-sufficiency and completeness they had enjoyed in classical
art, in which each part separately represents the whole. In the former art, the
composition follows the monarchical law of submission, instead of the democratic
marshalling of parts, to be observed in classical art. The parts are subordinated
to the whole often represented by a dominant element, instead of being, as in
classical art, co-ordinated with one another. The law of unity in variety is
preserved in both cases, but classical abstract beauty gives way to characteristic
beauty in anti-classical art.
(7) Finally, to Plotinus, total knowledge of a subject does not proceed from
a succession of propositions about it. Knowledge must possess the whole subject
and be identical with it. Art is an instance of this, since its knowledge includes
the very prototype it imitates. The wisdom of the gods is not propounded in
propositions but exposed in beautiful images. It is expressed integrally as, in the
Egyptian script a single symbol expresses a whole idea, in contrast to the Greek
or Latin which puts several letters together to compose a word.
Art provides with its pictures direct consummate knowledge, thanks to the
intellectual vision. This kind of knowledge is not reasoning, but a sort of contact,
or of ineffable intellectual touch-an action antecedent to the birth of reasoning.
Grabar concludes that, as a result of this theory, art rejected imitation which
40
41

42

Grabar, p. 22.
A fresco of Palmyrian deities in Doura of the second century A.D.

Grabar, pp. 32-34.

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P. A. MICHELIS

stressed the appearance of things or their proportions. Plotinus seeks, not


imitation of, but participation in the object of vision and through it in the One,
Grabar reminds US.43
Yet art in the age of Plotinus and Christian art later did not reject imitation.
In a sense in fact it became more realistic than its predecessor had been, since
both sculpture and painting-particularly the latter-now focussed their attention on portraiture. Christian art of course combatted its realism with
expressivism and reproduced its subjects' characteristicbeauty, just as classical
art had opposed idealism to realism, and rendered abstractbeauty. In any case,
art showed a tendency to turn inward. Beyond pleasing color (euXpota)and good
proportions (av4Erpla) Plotinus sought in composition the unity of the idea."
But in order to make the beauty of the Idea evident, Plotinus demands of the
spectator unity of consciousness, so that all the faculties of the soul take part in
his judgment; in aesthetic judgment, namely, contemplation of the Good and
the True comes into play. In this he differs from Plato. Kant, however, is very
much of the same opinion.45
Now, according to Grabar, the frontal attitude in art was a result of Plotinus'
demand that the spectator should stand before the statue of God, face to face,
eye to eye, in order to realize participation. But Grabar, finding no precedent
of the frontal attitude in Eastern art (other than in the Doura representations)
is puzzled. In my opinion, its absence from the earlier and appearance in the
later art merely proves (a) that art each time creates for itself the forms it
needs, without always drawing on antecedents; and (b) that the frontal representation was most likely created by the artist without reference to the letter of
philosophy, and certainly without any intention on his part to apply its precepts
prosaically in his work.
In interpreting Protinus, we should guard against converting his metaphysics
into physics, but treating it as such, we ought, above all, to keep in sight the
sublime feeling that runs through his aesthetics. (And this must surely have
been the spirit in which artists approached him in his day.) Otherwise, we are
in danger of ascribing to Plotinus intentions and suggestions on technique, of
which he himself must have been utterly unaware. The aim of an aesthetic
philosophy can never be to offer suggestions in technique; far less so in the case
43Ibid.,

pp. 24-25.

The quality of a work consists neither of happy color nor of symmetry, for then beauty
would be composite and its parts in themselves would not be beautiful. In the work of art,
the Idea unifies the composition; and when this is apparent we are charmed by beauty.
Plotinus therefore is interested, not in how the work is presented, but in what appears there.
And indeed, only this attitude to art can explain how the harmony of abstract classical
beauty came to be replaced by characteristic beauty, so that highly emphasized contrasts
and even the repulsive note of the ugly were later tolerated when it came to expressing
exalted experiences. But these later developments had not even occurred to Plotinus, nor
did he, in discarding "euchroia" and "symmetry" propose anything to take their place.
46 Theodoracopoulos (pp. 95, 96, 98) adds that Kant's definition of critical taste is practically identical with Plotinus' definition of artistic understanding. Both attribute the
capacity they define to a special spiritual faculty. They are again on common ground in
making the enchantment of the soul ("Entzilcktwerden der Seele"), a criterion of beautywith this difference only, that Kant does not associate this enchantment with the Good
and the True, as Plotinus does.
44

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of the ancient philosophers, who did not condescend to deal in such matters.
Therefore, despite the importance which Plotinus attributes to beauty, indeed
precisely because of it, we should not view his aesthetics as the science it is
today-a science treating of art in the main. Plotinus was interested in beauty
chiefly as a vehicle to the spiritual domain.
Of course a change in the artistic technique of an age is invariably the result
of a shifting in the view of the scheme of things, the unconscious adaptation of
art to the prevailing world theory. And in our own age, it is in our world-theory
we should look for the explanation of our art, which, in abandoning perspective,
in disclosing many angles of vision, and in employing local color effects, has
surpassed impressionism and now seeks the structure of the world's patterns,
attempting to analyze their essence.
III. Theory of Magical Realism in Byzantine Art
If Grabar has put a materialistic construction on Plotinus' metaphysics,
Demus has done the same for the theological tenets derived from it. The result
is that he too has misunderstood Byzantine aesthetics. Let us examine some of
his theories in this connection.
To begin with, Demus explains how, during the iconomachy Theodore of
Studium and John of Damascus founded the theory of the icon in relation to
Christian dogma. The image, according to the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation
(bKrop/r) is a product of illumination ('KeaJ4/L?); the icon, therefore, partakes of
the sanctity of its prototype. If it differs from it "according to its essence"
(KaTr'obcatv) it is identical with it "according to its meaning" (KaO'&roraotav).
The relation between the prototype and its image is analogous to that between
God the Father and Christ His Son. The icon is as authentic in its representation of the Divine as is the reproduction of the Passion during Sacred Liturgy.
(1) From the above Demus concludes that the painter "exercises a function
similar to that of the priest."46 But, in asserting this, Demus misleadingly
overshadows the painter's purely artistic ends by the religious character of his
work. In painting his sacred subject, the painter is as far from "exercising the
functions of a priest," as is the priest from exercising those of an actor in officiating. Of course, the painter approaches his sacred subject with faith and
reverence: he fasts and prays before devoting himself to its representation, then
sinks into the obscurity of the anonymous artist. But though he feels his mission
to be sacred, his ends and means are primarily artistic. If he fails as an artist,
he has failed as a symbolist too. His symbols must have artistic merit, and are
intended to appeal, not only to the devout Christian, but also to the profane
and the non-believer. The priest's symbols, on the other hand, without intrinsic
artistic value, are meaningless to any but the believer to whom the priest exclusively addresses himself.
(2) Demus then goes on to say that the icon partakes of its prototype's
sanctity; and veneration is due to it only because through it, this worship passes
on to the prototype.47 But were the icon a purely priestly symbol, without art
to propel imagination to a spiritual sphere, pious worship might have sunk to
46
47

Demus, p. 6.
Ibid., p. 6.

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abject idolatry. The icon, in other words, helps to uplift the mind of the worshipper only so long as it remains an artistic medium primarily. And that is
what Byzantine art achieved. (Of course, had the icon been beautiful, there
would have been the danger of the spectator falling in love with an idol; Byzantine art however, was not concerned with reproducing physical beauty, but with
conveying the sublime experience.)
(3) Now, Demus suddenly introduces an anti-religious and foreign element,
which he calls "Oriental"48-namely, the element of magic. Now by magic we
understand those arts which pretend to minister to man by the assistance of
spirits and forces of nature. Magic is undoubtedly associated with Neo-Platonismn
and the East. It may even be said to have played a part in the lowest scale of
the religious beliefs of the faithful, but what part it played was unofficial, and
certainly not sanctioned by the Church; for the results would be catastrophic
to religion, as they would be to art too if art did not go over magic.
When Demus, then, describes the relation of the worshipper to the icon as a
"magic relation," we may not unjustifiably infer the implication that the icon
becomes to the worshipper a vehicle for attaining base ends by the propitiation
of such demons or other supernatural powers. When, furthermore, he characterizes the icon's identity with its prototype according to its meaning as a
"magical identity"49 although he stresses that,-in contrast to the idol, which
has value in itself-this identity "exists only for and through the beholder," he
little realizes that in that way lies pure iconolatry. Finally, he speaks of "magical
realism"50 in Byzantine painting, achieved by the communion of spectator
and icon, in the real space of the church. And he takes this as the guiding principle
in both the composition and disposition of the icons.
The pursuit of so materialistic an end, however, would certainly have spelt
inartistic results; and this is far from being the case in the Byzantine church.
Let us, then, analyze the inferences Demus draws from his premise and see
whether it is not in fact untenable.
(4) "The image," he writes, "must possess 'similarity' with its prototype";
a frontal attitude is therefore needed to make this similarity visible and comprehensible and to establish the relation with the beholder. The profile view is
reserved only for "figures which represent evil forces ... like Judas." But
because in large compositions, where the figures must converse with one another,
this device would be awkward, the Byzantine artist resorts to the three-quarter
profile. The representations thus become unnatural and rigid, and in order to
avert the impression that the gestures meet at a point outside the picture plane,
the ingenious solution is discovered, of placing them in niches on curved surfaces
and in domes, so that they face one another as they communicate through the
physical space where their movements meet.
There is no depth behind the picture plane. Fictitious space52was superfluous
B

Ibid.t P- 43.

49 Ibid.,

p. 6.
Ibid., p.43.
51IBid., pp. 6-7.
50

S2

Ibid.,

p. 9.

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in the Byzantine painting, since it "enclosed the real space" in front of it, where
the spectator stood, "not so much a beholder as a participant."53 To Demus,
the gold background does not stand for infinite depth, but "is left empty.""
Now surely if the spectator's impression is that the figures move only in the
real space in front of the icon, this would have the effect of making the church
seem like a cage, in which the figures are imprisoned. In point of fact, neither
Byzantine painting nor mosaic (with its monochrome background utterly bereft
of a landscape) is devoid of fictitious space. Both must inevitably place their
representations somewhere in space, and if they do not reproduce this space
naturalistically (i.e., directly), they suggest it indirectly. In Byzantine painting
and mosaic, the figures themselves do so through their gestures, their difference
in scale, their gradation of tones, and variety of colors. Even their monochrome
gold background with its scintillation gives the impression of ethereal, celestial
space and diffused light, in which heavenly beings hover. And in thus transporting the imagination, Byzantine mosaic and painting, far from encaging the
figures in the church, seem in fact to push back its very walls in an ideal plan.
Again Demus, in letting the Byzantine picture partake of the space in which
the spectator moves,55 does away with aesthetic distance, which even sculpture
-placing its statues in physical space as it must do-creates between spectator
and statue; so that in imagination, the spectator is transferred to that ideal
space in which alone this ideal form could live. Painting, if anything, makes
this distance more pronounced, since of course it achieves it more easily, thanks
to its two-dimensional surface which makes of the representations almost insubstantial wraiths, immaterial reflections of reality. If the aesthetic distance does
not exclude the impression that the figures move in front of the picture plane,
this still does not make them move in the real space, but in a space again ideal,
which is the illusion of a heightened imagination-not the result of the figures'
emplacement in a niche. An instance in point is a mosaic of the Annunciation in
Daphni, in which the "movement not only links the figures into a unit, but also
creates space in the picture. The concave surface of the squinch itself contributes
to this effect, since it apparently diminishes the distance between the two
figures, allowing us for a moment to imagine that the Angel is actually flying
through the niche's space."56Art in other words-as, bringing the divine down
to earth, it elevates man to the divine-creates an ideal sphere in which the two
make contact helped by imagination.
(5) Pilgrimages to the Holy Land and crusades, Demus maintains, found
little response in Byzantium, because the devout had in the iconographic scheme
of his church, the three zones representing (a) heaven; (b) the life of Christ
(and so "the magical counterpart of the Holy Land"), and (c) the earth with
the Choir of Saints.57
The Byzantine worshipper had therefore, according to Demus, little need of
53 Ibid., p. 4.
14

65

Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 4.

56

Michelis, op. cit., p. 125.

57

Demus,

p. 15.

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P. A. MICHELIS

pilgrimages and was content with contemplating the icons, because, on the
one hand, these were not regarded as "pictures" but as "magic realities"58and
because on the other-and in contrast to the West-time is not construed
historically but symbolically from the Byzantine iconographic disposition in the
church.
Such a symbolical view of time in Byzantine iconography would of course
entail a similar view of space; and this would seem to contradict Demus' earlier
statement that the icons move in the real space of the church. If the worshipper's
imagination surpasses the boundaries of time in his church, it must in the same
way surpass those of space. However this may be, the above is a one-sided view
in Demus, who is inclined to overlook the fact that the icon, a purely religious
work though it is, is at least as much a work of art as it is a religious symbol.
And the difference between a purely religious symbol and a purely religious work
of art need scarcely be emphasized.
The reason in Byzantium for the lack of response to, and in the West the
passion for, crusades is to be sought, I suggest, in their different conception of
religion. The passion for crusades in the West was also due partly to political
reasons. Byzantium, according to Greek tradition, strove for the Christian creed
as an idea remote from practical considerations. It analyzed the theological
problems and with its objective outlook risked destruction in raising the icon
controversy. Whereas the West, following the Roman tradition, was concerned
with religion chiefly in so far as it affected the individual and his life.59Br6hier60
writes that the West put the emphasis on subjectivism, on man's individual
relations with God, and on the importance of practical acts; and that we find
this point of view marking the movement that sprang from Augustine to this
day.
In this mentality lies the explanation not only of the crusades but also of the
West's preference for sculpture to painting, as also of the didactic and tortured
scenes, the monsters of the speculum universale, and the chronological sequence
in narrative in the mediaeval Western cathedral.
(6) Demus explains that the West, because of its historical narrative tendency,
preferred the basilica, where there is a beginning and an end, "with its definite
direction parallel with the unrolling of the story." Byzantium preferred the
dome centralized building, "which has no strongly emphasized direction" where
the glance therefore wanders round and round, and the icons can be disposed in
hierarchical order from above downwards, in three zones-Heaven, the Holy
Land, the Earth.61 So the church becomes a symbol of the world, "an ideal
"62
iconostasion.

Byzantine architecture is essentially a "hanging architecture,"63Demus further


asserts, and is "in complete accord with the Byzantine hierarchical way of
58

Ibid., p. 30.

B. Tatakis, in his recent work, Philosophie Byzantine (from Brehier's Histoire de la


Philosophie) (Paris, 1949), p. 108, gives a lucid analysis of this point.
60 Brehier's Preface to B. Tatakis,
Philosophie Byzantine, p. vi.
61 Demus, p. 16.
59

62
63

Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 12.

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thought." Its columns appear like "hanging roots." Conversely, Western architecture proclaims the principle of organic growth, and the Greek temple the
idea of perfect equilibrium of forces.
Now, the columns of Byzantine architecture, although lacking ribs and
entasis, yet do not seem to me to resemble hanging roots. What in fact happens
is (as I have elsewhere stressed)64that in Byzantine architecture, carried members are aesthetically superior to the supporting ones; yet we are spared any
sense of discomfort in witnessing this because the supports carry only arches
and groin-vaults, which by their curves lure the eye ever onwards and thus
make of the columns not, as it were, permanent pedestals for burdens, but only
momentary resting-places, whence it is shifted elsewhere. In other words, we
lose the impression of burden and support, as well as of pressure and bending,
as we become aware mainly of cohesion and rigidity in mass. Moreover, in an
architecture by nature monolithic, we tolerate thrusts and pierced surfaces.
Finally, projections and plastic decoration have been abolished to let plain
surfaces and lines of edges that demarcate their limits dominate, so that the
masses seem to have shed their weight and to be dematerialized.
Nor is Gothic, in contrast to Byzantine, architecture organic with the meaning
Demus attributes to this word, thereby suggesting that Byzantine architecture
is unorganic. The high supports of Gothic cathedrals rise abruptly, branching
out into piers, that seem almost to carry the clouds. That is to say, here, in
contrast to the Byzantine church, the burdens are aesthetically inferior to the
supports, whose balance is aesthetically justified only by the ribbed formation
of the carrying skeleton, and technically possible only by its exterior buttresses.
Here again, the difference is not to be sought in "hanging" or "organic"
architecture, so much as in an unworldly and a materialistic spirit respectively,
which pervaded each architecture-in two varying conceptions of religion which,
in the Byzantine church, found shape in restrained loftiness and harmonious
proportions; in the Gothic, in an unrestrained fervor that displayed technical
and material achievement. With the light flooding its dome, a symbol of the
sky, the Byzantine church draws the spectator's thoughts upward to God. It
achieves greater spirituality than the Gothic, in that, far from annihilating the
spectator with its bulk, it helps him to elevate his mind. The Gothic church
with its exaggerated height is in its very proportions expressivistic and overwhelms the spectator. Placing its representations in a succession of ascending
strips, it little heeds whether the eye can see them at that exaggerated height.
In the Byzantine church, on the contrary, the higher its pictures are placed,
the bigger they are painted.
The Byzantine artist, in placing his more prominent figures higher and therefore proportionately enlarging them, reverses the scale of optical diminution
and surpasses it, in order to preserve the essential scale of values, appropriate
to his figures. Thus, the Almighty is drawn on the scale of God. This indeed is
in keeping with the Greek tradition, which placed in the ancient temple an
over-size statue of the god.
Of course, this optical reversal in Byzantine iconography presupposes the
64

Michelis, P. A., p. 55.

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etherealizing tendency of Byzantine painting. For, were the Almighty, drawn as


He is on a vast scale, naturalistically presented in the concave dome, the
picture would have been as intolerable as are the Baroque forms of the divinity
and of angels. But here, two-dimensional as the figure is, the concavity of the
dome helps to make it lose its bulk and so become an ectoplasmic body; precisely
as the church, with its dematerialized mass, becomes a spiritual edifice, "not
made by human hands." By this reversal, then, of the scale of optical diminution
in Byzantine iconography, the realm beyond the sky is brought near the spectator, and the Almighty rules over church and spectator without annihilating
them. To all this the concentration of light in the dome also contributes.
(7) The arrangement of the icons hierarchically from above downwards,
according to prominence both of size of icon and sanctity of figure, and their
emplacement in curved surfaces brought with it, according to Demus, an "antiperspective optic"-"optical principles aiming at eliminating the diminution
and deformation of perspective."65 He therefore considers that the disproportionate enlargements of iconography are optical corrections for the benefit
of the spectator standing below; precisely as in the case of ancient statues. It is
the tradition of statue making being handed down in a "negative" perspective.
Yet Byzantine presentations seen even from below, still show distorted proportions and unnatural attitudes and gestures; their character is, namely, still
expressivistic. An art as developed as the Byzantine, was certainly well aware
of the fact that height and curved surfaces distort the representation. And it
naturally employed what devices it thought necessary to overcome these difficulties each time. But it was never the object of such devices to present naturally proportioned bodies. Moreover such could not have been the aim of
Byzantine art, for then its presentations would have depended on a single given
angle of vision. In Renaissance and Baroque art, of which the perspective did so
depend on a single angle of vision (Pater Pozzo) and which achieved realism,
the representations seem distorted and unnatural, as soon as the spectator moves
from the set single point, usually marked on the floor of the central nave.66 In
the Byzantine church the pictures appear unnatural from everywhere, because
they do not aim to appear natural from anywhere.A7
Being a Greek art, Byzantine painting shows its wisdom in avoiding mechanical
systems which, useful as they may be to science, are of little benefit to art. And
if the system of perspective did in fact prove useful, it did so only to the art of
the Renaissance that was naturalistic, and the criteria of which we may not
apply in judging an art so wholly different from it as the Byzantine.
(8) Demus affirms that the Byzantine painter never "depicted light as coming
" Demus, p. 30.
66J. Durm, "Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien," in Handbuch der Baukunst

(Leipzig, 1914), p. 869.


67 The principle of the perspectivecurieuse emerges in Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, in
which the artist seems to consider the walls and ceiling as of glass, with the figures standing
upright behind them; and he reproduces them thus, as he sees them behind the transparent
glass. As for the shape of the roof, the curved is preferred to the angular, but this concerns
us little here.

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from a distinct source, but used real light in the icons."68 It would have been
more to the point to have said that an anti-naturalistic art has little need to
confine itself to a single source of light in the picture, and therefore has resort
to several (as does, in fact, art in our own day). This, however, does not mean
that it has resort to the real light outside the picture. Demus seeks the cooperation of real light in the Byzantine picture as he seeks that of real space.
Demus goes on to say that sometimes, when there was not enough natural
light, "a special kind of modelling was executed which recalls the inverted
tonality of photographic negatives." The method gained currency in Paleologian painting, he tells us.69Surely, then, the very fact that Paleologian painting adopted the method wholesale, irrespective of the adequacy of lighting,
vitiates the theory that it was employed only where real light was wanting.
It would seem to prove rather that the method of inverted tonality was from
the first a pictorial device and not a way of combining artificial with real light.
But in Hosios Loukas, too, which Demus mentions as providing an especially
interesting example of his theory, works with negative shadows do not appear
only in isolated points where light is poor, but also in several groups of pictures
placed at points where there is ample light. There is little need to attempt to
justify inverted tonality by an alleged inadequacy of natural light; the introduction of this artifice is merely a note of impressionistic illusionism in an art
which, contrary to the general idea, was full of ingenuity and had an aversion
to uniformity and to system.
Moreover, we have seen in the example earlier quoted of so-called "reversed
perspective," that such inversions in art often establish a thesis, as in logic the
negation of a negation. In refusing to imitate the physical, the painter may be
said to reject that which denies the spiritual; and a transcendental art is justified in thus refusing imitation, if it is capable of creating another world in place
of the physical-a self-sufficient, consistent, and harmonious world which fills
all the aesthetic demands of the spectator.
(9) In modelling the Byzantine mosaic, two techniques are simultaneously
employed, the technique of grading and that of sharp contrast.70 Some have
attributed these different techniques in the same work to an earlier and a later
period, some to different influences on the contemporary artist. Demus cuts
the Gordian knot by attributing it to technical reasons. The size of the mosaic,
he maintains, determines whether or not gradation of colors is permissible.
For if the artist adopts the technique of gradations, he must bear in mind the
limited range of shades of each color, and remember that he cannot afford to
exhaust prematurely the whole range of shades at his disposal along the outlines of the forms.
Technical reasons certainly to a large extent decided the choice of technique,
but I feel that the final decision rested with the artist; his initiative was not so
much conditioned by, as given free play in, various factors-the height at which
68
69
70

Demus, p. 35.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 37.

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he should place his work, the light which would fall on it, the material he disposed of, the figures he had to paint, and chiefly the style he intended to give
his work. Byzantine art provided a wide field of activity for individual conceptions-hence its mutations and infinite variety even in one and the same
work.
(10) Paleologian art, Demus asserts, in the absence of niches in which to
place its icons, painted them in the picture; in order to suggest the real space
contained in such niches, it introduced architectonic features and curved thrones.
It also "suggested space in front of and below the picture plane;" a technique
strongly reminiscent of the monumental paintings of the classical Byzantine
era, when the beholder communicated with the icon through physical space.
In describing the Paleologian painting as "reminiscent" of that relation between picture and beholder, Demus implies that the relation has now weakened; and he goes on to say that the "process" (of suggesting space in front
of the picture) "goes so far that hands, feet and garments actually overlap the
bottom of the frame"; figures seem to be "precipitated out of the picture into
bottomless depth."'71
In the first place, in classical Byzantine architecture, it was not the niche
only, but the whole church which enclosed space. Second, in view of the fact
that most of the icons were placed outside the niches, and that the niche was
in any case peculiar only to the octagonal type of church, its absence from the
Paleologian architecture could not have been so much felt that it had to be
imitated in painting. Admitting the niche, like the curved throne, in the picture
to be the most characteristic architectonic form of a cavity enclosing space,
I would then reverse Demus' sentence and say, not that the Paleologian painting missed the niches in the church, but that it borrowed them to enhance its
own fictitious depth.
The overlapping of the frame is to be seen also in classical relief work. It is
an impressive way of eliminating the frame's limits and of stressing the continuity of space in front of, with the fictitious space behind the picture. But
here again, the space in front of the picture is suggested as ideal, owing to the
aesthetic distance art creates between the work and the spectator. Once that
distance is lost, the work ceases to be a work of art; incapable of transporting
our imagination, it appears to us as an absurd and inadequate imitation of
reality.
In the Byzantine paintings in question, there is no suggestion, as I see it,
of "figures being precipitated beyond the frame into bottomless space," but a
suggestion of expanding fictitious space, which unfolds both in front of and
behind the picture; so that the figure, in moving towards the spectator, increases the depth behind it. The device was useful to a technique lacking perspective.
The scrolls, the thrones, the landscapes, and the dramatic gestures of Paleologian painting, are, obviously, expressions of a Baroque-like turn in Byzantine
art towards its decline; a phase which succeeds the acme of every great art.
In that phase, balance is abolished; passionate expression predominates, forms
71

Ibid., p. 81.

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become curved, gestures dramatic, celestial beings seem to be straining after


the earth, and the picture space to deepen in front of and behind the figures.
Hence the touch of illusionistic naturalism in Paleologian art.
Briefly, had the Byzantine artist confused the artistic and religious attitude
of man (even when appealing exclusively to the pious spectator) we would not
today have perceived any artistic value in his works. As for the magic element,
it never inspired and never could inspire the lofty and hieratically minded art
of Byzantium, as I hope I have proved by this criticism of the results that
spring from Demus' theory.

IV. Conclusions
(a) Plotinian philosophy is inevitably misinterpreted when applied to explain early Christian art instead of the art of its own age, as would have been
more natural. Christian art, no matter the degree to which it may have derived
from Neo-Platonic aesthetics, is inspired, not by the Neo-Platonists' pagan
mysticism which springs from the impersonal One, but by the divine revelation
of the One and Only God. It is an art of the Sublime and not of the Beautiful.
(b) Aesthetic values are inevitably misunderstood, when theological tenets
are brought as criteria to explain artistic questions. The historical and religious
analysis of an art's symbols (unless these are artistically self-sufficient) does
not attribute artistic value to them. Christian art has not provided purely
religious symbols, intelligible only to the initiate, but forms capable of moving
any spectator, not by the degree of sanctity accorded to them but by their
purely aesthetic appeal. Such forms can be best judged, then, in the sphere
of aesthetics.
(c) The aesthetic category of the Sublime corresponds to the spirit of Christian
art. The way in which the Greeks perceived and expressed it characterizes the
art of Byzantium.
The Romantics, who revealed anew the feeling of the Sublime, were able to
appreciate and revive mediaeval Christian art; whereas the Renaissance, whose
Ideal was the Beautiful, condemned it.

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